When an application is installed on an electronic system, an installer program is typically used to manage the installation process. For example, the Windows® operating system provides the Windows Installer to install and uninstall other applications. Windows Installer allows registry and other system files to be updated or modified during the installation process. All registered trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Other operating systems may provide a different user experience during installation, but some basic operations, for example, modification of files on disk may still be performed.
Some programs exist only for certain operating system and/or hardware platform combinations. Thus, if a user is lacking the correct operating system or hardware, that user is unable to utilize the desired program. Certain solutions exist for this problem including, for example, upgrading operating systems or hardware, which can be expensive, or use of multiple operating systems on a single computing system, which can be expensive and provide technical challenges. Currently, solutions to this problem are expensive or otherwise burdensome to users.